Show HN: Guess which government programs work
80000hours.org
Show HN: Guess which government programs work
1–10 of 60 posts
Re: Show HN: Guess which government programs work
#2I'm one of the creators of the quiz!
Note that the projects were not chosen based on their results, and certainly not because the results are counterintuitive. Rather they are the ten best understood social programs we could find.
You can read about the findings of our research into whether people can guess what works and what doesn't ahead of time: http://www.vox.com/2015/8/13/9148123/quiz-which-programs-wor...
Re: Show HN: Guess which government programs work
#3I'm one of the creators of the quiz! Note that the projects were not chosen based on their results, and certainly not because the results are counterintuitive. Rather they are the ten best understood social programs we could find. You can read about the findings of our research into whether people can guess what works and what doesn't ahead of time: http://www.vox.com/2015/8/13/9148123/quiz-which-programs-wor...
Hey, this is really neat. It reminds me of the lesswrong.com community, where the goal is to figure out ways of offsetting cognitive biases.
One thing I've always wanted to see is a mandatory A/B test built into any new legislation. That is, funding for a study after X years of the new law or program being in place would have to be part of the law. It could even including a threshold of the desired controlled effect of the law or else it is immediately revoked at that point.
This way we'd force people to argue not about 2nd order issues ("I think mandatory sentencing is good" vs. "No, I think it's bad") when they could agree on first order issues ("We all want to see a 10% decrease in robberies within 3 years.") This way a bad program would automatically expire if it didn't meet its goals, and the goals would have to be open enough that people could throw out bad laws ("Goal is to incarcerate 20% of the population" wouldn't pass, no matter what your political leaning).
Re: Show HN: Guess which government programs work
#4I'm one of the creators of the quiz! Note that the projects were not chosen based on their results, and certainly not because the results are counterintuitive. Rather they are the ten best understood social programs we could find. You can read about the findings of our research into whether people can guess what works and what doesn't ahead of time: http://www.vox.com/2015/8/13/9148123/quiz-which-programs-wor...
But don't read the article before taking the quiz. It gives away one of the best answers.
Re: Show HN: Guess which government programs work
#5Having conclusive evidence that a program doesn't work (or even is harmful) is significant. How effective is it for actually getting such programs stopped? Have any been?
Re: Show HN: Guess which government programs work
#6The Elderly care question said that there was no effect on 3 year mortality, which is fine and I'm sure that is accurate but it doesn't answer the question of "Did it have a net positive/negative effect on quality of life for those 3 years".
Not been a negative nelly just an observation that something as complex as social interaction problems can't always be summed up with a clear net gain/loss.
Loved the idea and implementation though.
Re: Show HN: Guess which government programs work
#7[deleted]
Re: Show HN: Guess which government programs work
#8It would be nice to see a summary of the projects and their effects after finishing the quiz. By that time, I had already forgotten about some and wondered what the answers were.
Re: Show HN: Guess which government programs work
#9It would be nice to see a summary of the projects and their effects after finishing the quiz. By that time, I had already forgotten about some and wondered what the answers were.
Thanks for the feedback, I'll see if we can change that!
Re: Show HN: Guess which government programs work
#10It would be nice to see a summary of the projects and their effects after finishing the quiz. By that time, I had already forgotten about some and wondered what the answers were.
[deleted]